In what is considered a forerunner to disco-style clubs, a New York City DJ, David Mancuso, opened The Loft, a members-only private dance club set in his own home, in February 1970.[18][19] The first article about disco was written in September 1973 by Vince Aletti for Rolling Stone magazine.[20] In 1974 New York City's WPIX-FM premiered the first disco radio show.[19]

The disco sound has soaring, often reverberated vocals over a steady "four-on-the-floor" beat, an eighth note (quaver) or 16th note (semi-quaver) hi-hat pattern with an open hi-hat on the off-beat, and a prominent, syncopatedelectric bass line sometimes consisting of octaves. The Fender Jazz Bass is often associated with disco bass lines, because the instrument itself has a very prominent "voice" in the musical mix. In most disco tracks, strings, horns, electric pianos, and electric guitars create a lush background sound. Orchestral instruments such as the flute are often used for solo melodies, and lead guitar is less frequently used in disco than in rock. Many disco songs employ the use of electronic instruments such as synthesizers.

Well-known late 1970s disco performers included ABBA, Giorgio Moroder, Donna Summer, The Bee Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band, The Trammps, Gloria Gaynor and Chic. Various critics would also claim that Kraftwerk, who were an electronic band played a large part in pioneering disco as well as the electronic sound that became a big element of disco. While performers and singers garnered some public attention, producers working behind the scenes played an equal, if not more important role in disco, since they often wrote the songs and created the innovative sounds and production techniques that were part of the "disco sound".[21]

Many non-disco artists recorded disco songs at the height of disco's popularity, and films such as Saturday Night Fever and Thank God It's Friday contributed to disco's rise in mainstream popularity. Disco was the last mass popular music movement that was driven by the baby boom generation.[22] Disco music was a worldwide phenomenon, but its popularity declined in the United States in the late 1970s. On July 12, 1979, an anti-disco protest in Chicago called "Disco Demolition Night" had shown that an angry backlash against disco and its culture had emerged in the United States. In the subsequent months and years, many musical acts associated with disco struggled to get airplay on the radio in the US although they did not experience such problems in other countries. A few artists still managed to score disco hits in the early 1980s, but the term "disco" became unfashionable in the new decade and was eventually replaced by "dance music", "dance pop", and other identifiers. Although the production techniques have changed, many successful acts since the 1970s have retained the basic disco beat and mentality, and dance clubs have remained popular.[23] A disco revival was seen, first in 2005 with Madonna's album Confessions on a Dance Floor, and again in 2013, as disco-styled songs by artists like Daft Punk (with Nile Rodgers), Justin Timberlake, Breakbot, and Bruno Mars filled the pop charts in the UK and the US.[8][24]

By the late 1970s most major U.S. cities had thriving disco club scenes. Studio 54 was arguably the most well known of these nightclubs. Popular dances included the "Robot" and The Hustle, a very sexually-suggestive dance. Discotheque-goers often wore expensive and extravagant fashions. There was also a thriving drug subculture in the disco scene, particularly for drugs that would enhance the experience of dancing to the loud music and the flashing lights, such as cocaine[25] (nicknamed "blow"), amyl nitrite "poppers",[26] and Quaaludes.[27] The other cultural phenomenon of the disco era was promiscuity and public sex in the clubs.

By the early 1940s, the terms DJ and Disc Jockey were in use to describe radio presenters.[9] Because of restrictions, jazz dance halls in Occupied France played records instead of using live music. Eventually more than one of these venues had the proper name discothèque.[9] By 1959, the term was used in Paris to describe any of these type of nightclubs.[9] That year a young reporter Klaus Quirini spontaneously started to select and introduce records at the Scotch-Club in Aachen, West Germany.[9] By the following year the term was being used in the United States to describe that type of club, and a type of dancing in those clubs.[9] By 1964, discotheque and the shorthand disco were used to describe a type of sleeveless dress worn when going out to nightclubs.[9] In September 1964, Playboy Magazine used the word disco as a shorthand for a discothèque-styled nightclub.[9]

The early disco was dominated with producers and labels such as Salsoul Records (Ken, Stanley, and Joseph Cayre), West End Records (Mel Cheren), Casablanca (Neil Bogart), and Prelude (Marvin Schlachter) to name a few. The genre was also shaped by Tom Moulton, who wanted to extend the enjoyment — thus creating the extended mix or "remix". Other influential DJs and remixers who helped to establish what became known as the "disco sound" included David Mancuso, Nicky Siano, Shep Pettibone, Larry Levan, Walter Gibbons, and Chicago-based "Godfather of House" Frankie Knuckles. Disco-era DJs would often remix (re-edit) existing songs using reel-to-reel tape machines, and add in percussion breaks, new sections, and new sounds. DJs would select songs and grooves according to what the dancers wanted, transitioning from one song to another with a DJ mixer and using a microphone to introduce songs and speak to the audiences. Other equipment was added to the basic DJ setup, providing unique sound manipulations, such as reverb, equalization, and echo. Using this equipment, a DJ could do effects such as cutting out all but the throbbing bassline of a song, and then slowly mixing in the beginning of another song using the DJ mixer crossfader.

In the northwestern sections of the United Kingdom the Northern Soul explosion, which started in late 1960s and peaked in 1974, made the region receptive to Disco which the region's Disc Jockeys were bringing back from New York. George McCrae's "Rock Your Baby" became the United Kingdom's first number one disco single.[35][36]

Major disco clubs had lighted dancefloors, with the light flashing according to the beat.

In 1975, American singer and songwriter Donna Summer recorded a song which she brought to her producer Giorgio Moroder entitled "Love to Love You Baby" which contained a series of simulated orgasms. The song was never intended for release but when Moroder played it in the clubs it caused a sensation. Moroder released it and it went to number 1. It has been described as the arrival of the expression of raw female sexual desire in pop music. A 17 minute 12 inch single was released. The 12" single became and remains a standard in discos today.[37]

In 1978, a multi-million selling vinyl single disco version of "MacArthur Park" by Summer was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Summer's recording, which was included as part of the "MacArthur Park Suite" on her double album Live and More, was eight minutes and forty seconds long on the album. The shorter seven-inch vinyl single version of the MacArthur Park was Summer's first single to reach number one on the Hot 100; it doesn't include the balladic second movement of the song, however. A 2013 remix of "Mac Arthur Park" by Summer hit #1 on the Billboard Dance Charts marking five consecutive decades with a #1 hit on the charts.[38] From 1978 to 1979, Summer continued to release hits such as "Last Dance", "Bad Girls", "Heaven Knows", "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)", "Hot Stuff" and "On the Radio", all very successful disco songs.

In December 1977, the film Saturday Night Fever was released. The film was marketed specifically to broaden disco's popularity beyond its primarily black and Latin audiences. It was a huge success and its soundtrack became one of the best-selling albums of all time. The idea for the film was sparked by a 1976 New Yorker Magazine article titled: "Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night" which chronicled the disco culture in mid-1970's New York City.

Chic was formed by Nile Rodgers — a self described "street hippie" from late 1960s New York — and Martin Dow, a DJ from Key West, Florida who pioneered the NYC sound across that state. "Le Freak" was a popular 1978 single that is regarded as an iconic song of the genre. Other hits by Chic include the often-sampled "Good Times" (1979) and "Everybody Dance". The group regarded themselves as the disco movement's rock band that made good on the hippie movements ideals of peace, love, and freedom. Every song they wrote was written with an eye toward giving it "deep hidden meaning" or D.H.M.[39]

Pre-existing non-disco songs and standards would frequently be "disco-ized" in the 1970s. The rich orchestral accompaniment that became identified with the disco era conjured up the memories of the big band era—which brought out several artists that recorded and disco-ized some big band arrangements including Perry Como, who re-recorded his 1929 and 1939 hit, "Temptation", in 1975, as well as Ethel Merman, who released an album of disco songs entitled The Ethel Merman Disco Album in 1979.

By the late 1970s, a strong anti-disco sentiment developed among rock fans and musicians, particularly in the United States.[43][44] The slogans "disco sucks" and "death to disco"[43] became common. Rock artists such as Rod Stewart and David Bowie who added disco elements to their music were accused of being sell outs.[45][46]

The punk subculture in the United States and United Kingdom was often hostile to disco.[43]Jello Biafra of The Dead Kennedys, in the song "Saturday Night Holocaust", likened disco to the cabaret culture of Weimar-era Germany for its apathy towards government policies and its escapism. Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo said that disco was "like a beautiful woman with a great body and no brains", and a product of political apathy of that era.[47] New Jersey rock critic Jim Testa wrote "Put a Bullet Through the Jukebox", a vitriolic screed attacking disco that was considered a punk call to arms.[48]

Anti-disco sentiment was expressed in some television shows and films. A recurring theme on the show WKRP in Cincinnati was a hostile attitude towards disco music. In one scene of the comedy film Airplane!, a city skyline features a radio tower with a neon-lighted station callsign. A disc jockey voiceover says: "WZAZ in Chicago, where disco lives forever!" Then a wayward airplane slices the radio tower with its wing, the voiceover goes silent, and the lighted callsign goes dark.

July 12, 1979 became known as "the day disco died" because of Disco Demolition Night, an anti-disco demonstration in a baseball double-header at Comiskey Park in Chicago.[49] Rock station DJs Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, along with Michael Veeck, son of Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck, staged the promotional event for disgruntled rock fans between the games of a White Sox doubleheader. The event, which involved exploding disco records, ended with a riot, during which the raucous crowd tore out seats and pieces of turf, and caused other damage. The Chicago Police Department made numerous arrests, and the extensive damage to the field forced the White Sox to forfeit the second game to the Detroit Tigers, who had won the first game. Six months prior to the chaotic event, popular progressive rock radio station WDAI (WLS-FM) had suddenly switched to an all disco format, disenfranchising thousands of Chicago rock fans and leaving Dahl unemployed.

On July 21, 1979, the top six records on the U.S. music charts were disco songs.[22] By September 22 there were no disco songs in the US Top 10 chart.[22] Some in the media, in celebratory tones, declared disco "dead" and rock revived.[22]

The anti-disco backlash, combined with other societal and radio industry factors, changed the face of pop radio in the years following Disco Demolition Night. Starting in the 1980s, country music began a slow rise in American main pop charts. Emblematic of country music's rise to mainstream popularity was the commercially successful 1980 movie Urban Cowboy. Somewhat ironically, the star of the film was John Travolta, who only three years before had starred in Saturday Night Fever, a film that featured disco culture.

During this period of decline in disco's popularity, several record companies folded, were reorganized, or were sold. In 1979, MCA Records purchased ABC Records, absorbed some of its artists, and then shut the label down. RSO Records founder Robert Stigwood left the label in 1981 and TK Records closed in the same year. Salsoul Records continues to exist today, but primarily is used as a reissue brand.[50]Casablanca Records had been releasing fewer records in the 1980s, and was shut down in 1986 by parent company PolyGram.

Many groups that were popular during the disco period subsequently struggled to maintain their success—even those that tried to adapt to evolving musical tastes. The Bee Gees, for instance, only had two top-40 hits in the United States after the 1970s ("One" in 1989 and "Alone" in 1997)—even though later songs they wrote and had others perform were successful. Of the handful of groups not taken down by disco's fall from favor, Kool and the Gang, The Jacksons—and Michael Jackson in particular—stand out: In spite of having helped define the disco sound early on,[51] they continued to make popular and danceable, if more refined, songs for yet another generation of music fans in the 1980s and beyond.

Factors that have been cited as leading to the decline of disco in the United States include economic and political changes at the end of the 1970s as well as burnout from the hedonistic lifestyles led by participants.[52] In the years since Disco Demolition Night, some social critics have described the backlash as implicitly macho and bigoted, and an attack on non-white and non-heterosexual cultures.[43][46][49]

In January 1979, rock critic Robert Christgau argued that homophobia, and most likely racism, were reasons behind the backlash,[45] a conclusion seconded by John Rockwell. Craig Werner wrote: "The Anti-disco movement represented an unholy alliance of funkateers and feminists, progressives and puritans, rockers and reactionaries. Nonetheless, the attacks on disco gave respectable voice to the ugliest kinds of unacknowledged racism, sexism and homophobia."[53]Legs McNeil, founder of the fanzinePunk, was quoted in an interview as saying, "the hippies always wanted to be black. We were going, 'fuck the blues, fuck the black experience'." He also said that disco was the result of an "unholy" union between homosexuals and blacks.[54]

Steve Dahl, who had spearheaded Disco Demolition Night, denied any racist or homophobic undertones to the promotion, saying, "It's really easy to look at it historically, from this perspective, and attach all those things to it. But we weren't thinking like that."[46] It has been noted that British punk rock critics of disco were very supportive of the pro-black/anti-racist reggae genre.[43]Robert Christgau and Jim Testa have said that there were legitimate artistic reasons for being critical of disco.[45][48]

In 1979 the music industry in the United States was undergoing its worst slump in decades, and disco, despite its mass popularity, was blamed. The producer-oriented sound was having difficulty mixing well with the industry's artist-oriented marketing system.[55] Harold Childs, senior vice president at A&M Records, told the Los Angeles Times that "radio is really desperate for rock product" and "they're all looking for some white rock-n-roll".[49]Gloria Gaynor argued that the music industry supported the destruction of disco because rock music producers were losing money and rock musicians were losing the spotlight.[56]

As disco's popularity sharply declined in the United States, abandoned by major U.S. record labels and producers, European disco continued evolving within the broad mainstream pop music scene.[60] European acts Silver Convention, Love and Kisses, Munich Machine, and American acts Donna Summer and the Village People, were acts that defined the late 1970s Euro disco sound. Producers Giorgio Moroder, whom AllMusic described as "one of the principal architects of the disco sound" with the Donna Summer hit "I Feel Love" (1977),[61] and Jean-Marc Cerrone were involved with Euro disco. The German group Kraftwerk also had an influence on Euro disco.

In France, Claude François who re-invented himself as the king of French disco, released "La plus belle chose du monde", a French version of the Bee Gees hit record, "Massachusetts", which became a big hit in Canada and Europe and "Alexandrie Alexandra" was posthumously released on the day of his burial and became a worldwide hit. Dalida released "J'attendrai", which became a big hit in Canada and Japan, and Cerrone's early hit songs, "Love in C Minor", "Give Me Love" and "Supernature" became major hits in the U.S. and Europe.

Diana Ross was one of the first Motown artists to embrace the disco sound with her hugely successful 1976 outing "Love Hangover" from her self-titled album. Ross would continue to score disco hits for the rest of the disco era, including the 1980 dance classics "Upside Down" and "I'm Coming Out" (the latter immediately becoming a favorite in the gay community). The Supremes, the group that made Ross famous, scored a handful of hits in the disco clubs without Ross, most notably 1976's "I'm Gonna Let My Heart Do the Walking" and, their last charted single before disbanding, 1977's "You're My Driving Wheel".

The music tended to layer soaring, often-reverberated vocals, which are often doubled by horns, over a background "pad" of electric pianos and wah-pedaled "chicken-scratch" guitars. Other backing keyboard instruments include the piano, organ (during early years), string synth, and electroacoustic keyboards such as the Fender Rhodes piano, Wurlitzer electric piano, and Hohner Clavinet. Synthesizers are also fairly common in disco, especially in the late 1970s.

Most disco songs have a steady four-on-the-floor beat, a quaver or semi-quaver hi-hat pattern with an open hi-hat on the off-beat, and a heavy, syncopated bass line. This basic beat would appear to be related to the Dominican merengue rhythm. Other Latin rhythms such as the rhumba, the samba and the cha-cha-cha are also found in disco recordings, and Latin polyrhythms, such as a rhumba beat layered over a merengue, are commonplace. The quaver pattern is often supported by other instruments such as the rhythm guitar and may be implied rather than explicitly present.

It often involves syncopation, rarely occurring on the beat unless a synthesizer is used to replace the bass guitar. In general, the difference between a disco, or any dance song, and a rock or popular song is that in dance music the bass hits four to the floor, at least once a beat (which in 4/4 time is 4 beats per measure), whereas in rock the bass hits on one and three and lets the snare take the lead on two and four. Disco is further characterized by a 16th note division of the quarter notes established by the bass as shown in the second drum pattern below, after a typical rock drum pattern.

The orchestral sound usually known as "disco sound" relies heavily on strings and horns playing linear phrases, in unison with the soaring, often reverberated vocals or playing instrumental fills, while electric pianos and chicken-scratch guitars create the background "pad" sound defining the harmony progression. Typically, a rich "wall of sound" results. There are, however, more minimalistic flavors of disco with reduced, transparent instrumentation, pioneered by Chic (band).

In 1977, Giorgio Moroder again became responsible for a development in disco. Alongside Donna Summer and Pete Bellotte he wrote the song "I Feel Love" for Summer to perform. It became the first well-known disco hit to have a completely synthesised backing track. The song is still considered to have been well ahead of its time. Other disco producers, most famously Tom Moulton, grabbed ideas and techniques from dub music (which came with the increased Jamaican migration to New York City in the seventies) to provide alternatives to the four on the floor style that dominated. Larry Levan utilized style keys from dub and jazz and more as one of the most successful remixers of all time to create early versions of house music that sparked the genre.[62]

The "disco sound" was much more costly to produce than many of the other popular music genres from the 1970s. Unlike the simpler, four-piece band sound of the funk, soul of the late 1960s, or the small jazzorgan trios, disco music often included a large pop band, with several chordal instruments (guitar, keyboards, synthesizer), several drum or percussion instruments (drumkit, Latin percussion, electronic drums), a horn section, a string orchestra, and a variety of "classical" solo instruments (for example, flute, piccolo, and so on).

Disco songs were arranged and composed by experienced arrangers and orchestrators, and producers added their creative touches to the overall sound. Recording complex arrangements with such a large number of instruments and sections required a team that included a conductor, copyists, record producers, and mixing engineers. Mixing engineers had an important role in the disco production process, because disco songs used as many as 64 tracks of vocals and instruments. Mixing engineers compiled these tracks into a fluid composition of verses, bridges, and refrains, complete with orchestral builds and breaks. Mixing engineers helped to develop the "disco sound" by creating a distinctive-sounding disco mix.

Early records were the "standard" 3 minute version until Tom Moulton came up with a way to make songs longer, wanting to take a crowd to another level that was impossible with 45-RPM vinyl discs of the time (which could usually hold no more than 5 minutes of good-quality music). With the help of José Rodriguez, his remasterer, he pressed a single on a 10" disc instead of 7". They cut the next single on a 12" disc, the same format as a standard album. This method fast became the standard format for all DJs of the genre.[63]

By the late 1970s most major U.S. cities had thriving disco club scenes, but the largest scenes were in San Francisco, Miami, and most notably New York City. The scene was centered on discotheques, nightclubs, and private loft parties where DJs would play disco hits through powerful PA systems for the patrons who came to dance. The DJs played "... a smooth mix of long single records to keep people 'dancing all night long'".[64] Some of the most prestigious clubs had elaborate lighting systems that throbbed to the beat of the music.

In October 1975 notable discos included "Studio One" in Los Angeles, "Leviticus" in New York and "The Library" in Atlanta.[65] The library Disco chain had locations in New City, Syracuse N.Y., Pittsburgh Pa., a short lived version in Denver, Co. as well as Atlanta Ga.

In the late 1970s, Studio 54 was arguably the most well known nightclub in the world. This club played a major formative role in the growth of disco music and nightclub culture in general.

In the early years dancers in discos danced in a "hang loose" style. Popular dances included "Bump", "Penguin", "Boogaloo", "Watergate" and the "Robot". By October 1975 The Hustle reigned. It was highly stylized, sophisticated and overtly sexual. Variations included the Brooklyn Hustle, New York Hustle and Latin Hustle.[65]

During the disco era, many nightclubs would commonly host disco dance competitions or offer free instructional lessons. Some cities had disco dance instructors or dance schools, which taught people how to do popular disco dances such as "touch dancing,"the hustle, and the cha cha. The pioneer of disco dance instruction was Karen Lustgarten in San Francisco in 1973. Her book The Complete Guide to Disco Dancing (Warner Books, 1978) was the first to name, break down and codify popular disco dances as a dance form and distinguish between disco freestyle, partner and line dances. The book hit the New York Times Best Seller List for 13 weeks and was translated into Chinese, German and French.

In Chicago, Step By Step launched with the sponsorship support of the Coca-Cola company. Produced in the same studio that Don Cornelius used for the nationally syndicated television show, Soul Train, Step by Step's audience grew and became an overnight success. The dynamic dance duo, Robin and Reggie spent the week teaching disco dancing in the disco clubs. The instructional show which aired on Saturday mornings had a following that would stay up all night on Fridays so they could be on the set the next morning, ready to return to the disco Saturday night equipped with the latest personalized dance steps. The producers of the show, John Reid and Greg Roselli routinely made appearances at disco functions with Robin and Reggie to scout out talent and promote upcoming events such as Disco Night at White Sox Park.

Disco fashions were very trendy in the late 1970s. Discothèque-goers often wore expensive and extravagant fashions for nights out at their local disco, such as sheer, flowing Halston dresses for women and shiny polyester Qiana shirts for men with pointy collars, preferably open at the chest, often worn with double-knit polyester shirt jackets with matching trousers known as the leisure suit. Necklaces and medallions were a common fashion accessory.

In addition to the dance and fashion aspects of the disco club scene, there was also a thriving drug subculture, particularly for drugs that would enhance the experience of dancing to the loud music and the flashing lights, such as cocaine[66] (nicknamed "blow"), amyl nitrite "poppers",[67] and the "... other quintessential 1970s club drug Quaalude, which suspended motor coordination and gave the sensation that one's arms and legs had turned to "Jell-O."[27]

According to Peter Braunstein, the "massive quantities of drugs ingested in discotheques produced the next cultural phenomenon of the disco era: rampant promiscuity and public sex. While the dance floor was the central arena of seduction, actual sex usually took place in the nether regions of the disco: bathroom stalls, exit stairwells, and so on. In other cases the disco became a kind of 'main course' in a hedonist's menu for a night out."[27]

The transition from the late-1970s disco styles to the early-1980s dance styles was marked primarily by the change from complex arrangements performed by large ensembles of studio session musicians (including a horn section and an orchestral string section), to a leaner sound, in which one or two singers would perform to the accompaniment of synthesizerkeyboards and drum machines.

In addition, dance music during the 1981–83 period borrowed elements from blues and jazz, creating a style different from the disco of the 1970s. This emerging music was still known as disco for a short time, as the word had become associated with any kind of dance music played in discothèques. Examples of early 1980s dance sound performers include D. Train, Kashif, and Patrice Rushen. These changes were influenced by some of the notable R&B and jazz musicians of the 1970s, such as Stevie Wonder, Kashif and Herbie Hancock, who had pioneered "one-man-band"-type keyboard techniques. Some of these influences had already begun to emerge during the mid-1970s, at the height of disco's popularity.

During the first years of the 1980s, the disco sound began to be phased out, and faster tempos and synthesized effects, accompanied by guitar and simplified backgrounds, moved dance music toward the funk and pop genres. This trend can be seen in singer Billy Ocean's recordings between 1979 and 1981. Whereas Ocean's 1979 song American Hearts was backed with an orchestral arrangement played by the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, his 1981 song "One of Those Nights (Feel Like Gettin' Down)" had a more bare, stripped-down sound, with no orchestration or symphonic arrangements. This drift from the original disco sound is called post-disco. In this music scene there are rooted subgenres, such as Italo disco, techno, house, dance-pop, boogie, and early alternative dance.[68] During the early 1980s, dance music dropped the complicated melodic structure and orchestration that typified the disco sound.

The rising popularity of disco came in tandem with developments in turntablism and the use of records to create a continuous mix of songs. The resulting DJ mix differed from previous forms of dance music, which were oriented towards live performances by musicians. This in turn affected the arrangement of dance music, with songs since the disco era typically containing beginnings and endings marked by a simple beat or riff that can be easily slipped into the mix.

As the Disco era came to a close in the late 1970s, rave culture began to see significant growth. Rave culture incorporated disco culture's same love of dance music, drug exploration, sexual promiscuity, and hedonism. Although disco culture had thrived in the mainstream, the rave culture would make an effort to stay underground to avoid the animosity that was still surrounding disco and dance music.

The post-punk movement that originated in the late 1970s both supported punk rock's rule breaking while rejecting its back to raw rock music element.[69] Post-punk's mantra of constantly moving forward lent itself to both openness to and experimentation with elements of disco and other styles.[69]Public Image Limited is considered the first post-punk group.[69] The group's second album Metal Box fully embraced the studio as instrument methodology of disco.[69] The group's founder John Lydon told the press that disco was the only music he cared for at the time. No wave was a subgenre of post-punk centered in New York City.[69]

Nu-disco is a 21st-century dance music genre associated with the renewed interest in 1970s and early 1980s disco,[75] mid-1980s Italo disco, and the synthesizer-heavy Euro disco aesthetics.[76] The moniker appeared in print as early as 2002, and by mid-2008 was used by record shops such as the online retailers Juno and Beatport.[77] These vendors often associate it with re-edits of original-era disco music, as well as with music from European producers who make dance music inspired by original-era American disco, electro and other genres popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is also used to describe the music on several American labels that were previously associated with the genres electroclash and french house.

^(2000) Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, ISBN 978-0-8021-3688-6, p.127: "Its [disco] music grew as much out of the psychedelic experiments ... as from ... Philadelphia orchestrations"

^(2008) The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism, ISBN 978-1-4165-3218-7, p.140: "Disco, which emerged from the psychedelic haze of flower power infused with R&B and social progress that was being cooked up at the Loft ..."

^Disco Double Take by The Village Voice: "And the scene's combination of overwhelming sound, trippy lighting, and hallucinogens was indebted to the late-60s psychedelic culture." Retrieved on November 29, 2008

^(2001) American Studies in a Moment of Danger, ISBN 978-0-8166-3948-9, p.145: "It has become general knowledge by now that the fusion of Latin rhythms, Anglo-Caribbean instrumentation, North American black "soul" vocals, and Euro-American melodies gave rise to the disco music"

^ ab(2003) The Drummer's Bible: How to Play Every Drum Style from Afro-Cuban to Zydeco, ISBN 978-1-884365-32-4, p.67: "Disco incorporates stylistic elements of Rock, Funk and the Motown sound while also drawing from Swing, Soca, Merengue and Afro-Cuban styles"

^ ab(2006) A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America, ISBN 978-0-472-03147-4, p.207: "A looser, explicitly polyrhythmic attack pushes the blues, gospel, and soul heritage into apparently endless cycle where there is no beginning or end, just an ever-present "now"."

^ abShapiro, Peter. "Turn the Beat Around: The Rise and Fall of Disco", Macmillan, 2006. p.204–206: " 'Broadly speaking, the typical New York discotheque DJ is young (between 18 and 30), Italian, and gay,' journalist Vince Lettie declared in 1975...Remarkably, almost all of the important early DJ were of Italian extraction...Italian Americans have played a significant role in America's dance music culture...While Italian Americans mostly from Brooklyn largely created disco from scratch..." [1].

^(2007) The 1970s, ISBN 978-0-313-33919-6, p.203–204: "During the late 1960s various male counterculture groups, most notably gay, but also heterosexual black and Latino, created an alternative to Rockefeller, which was dominated by white—and presumably heterosexual—men. This alternative was disco"

^ ab(2002) "Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Music", ISBN 978-0-8147-9809-6, ISBN 978-0-8147-9809-6, p.117: "New York City was the primary center of disco, and the original audience was primarily gay African Americans and Latinos."

^(1976) "Stereo Review", University of Michigan, p.75: "[..] and the result—what has come to be called disco—was clearly the most compelling and influential form of black commercial pop music since the halcyon days of the "Motown Sound" of the middle Sixties."

^Gutenberg, Paul 1954– – Between Coca and Cocaine: A Century or More of U.S.-Peruvian Drug Paradoxes, 1860–1980 – Hispanic American Historical Review – 83:1, February 2003, pp. 119–150. "The relationship of cocaine to 1970s disco culture cannot be stressed enough ..."

^Amy, butty and Isobel nitrite (collectively known as alkyd nitrites) are clear, yellow liquids inhaled for their intoxicating effects. Nitrites originally came as small glass capsules that were popped open. This led to nitrites being given the name 'poppers' but this form of the drug is rarely found in the UK. The drug became popular in the UK first on the disco/club scene of the 1970s and then at dance and rave venues in the 1980s and 1990s.

^"But the pre-Saturday Night Fever dance underground was actually sweetly earnest and irony-free in its hippie-dippie positivity, as evinced by anthems like M.F.S.B.'s 'Love Is the Message.'" – Village Voice, 10 July 2001.

^Paul Stanley, a guitarist for the rock group Kiss became friends with Desmond Child and, as Child remembered in Billboard, "Paul and I talked about how dance music at that time didn't have any rock elements." To counteract the synthesized disco music dominating the airwaves, Stanley and Child wrote, "I Was Made For Loving You." So, "we made history," Child further remembered in Billboard, "because we created the first rock-disco song."[volume & issue needed]

^Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture, ISBN 978-0-415-16161-9, ISBN 978-0-415-16161-9 (2001) p. 217: "In fact, by 1977, before punk spread, there was a 'disco sucks' movement sponsored by radio stations that attracted some suburban white youth, who thought that disco was escapist, synthetic, and overproduced."

^Gootenberg, Paul 1954– – Between Coca and Cocaine: A Century or More of U.S.-Peruvian Drug Paradoxes, 1860–1980 – Hispanic American Historical Review – 83:1, February 2003, pp. 119–150. "The relationship of cocaine to 1970s disco culture cannot be stressed enough ..."

^Amyl, butyl and isobutyl nitrite (collectively known as alkyl nitrites) are clear, yellow liquids inhaled for their intoxicating effects. Nitrites originally came as small glass capsules that were popped open. This led to nitrites being given the name 'poppers' but this form of the drug is rarely found in the UK. The drug became popular in the UK first on the disco/club scene of the 1970s and then at dance and rave venues in the 1980s and 1990s.